Letter to the Editor: Shamelessly audacious

John McClaughry wrote a misleading, shamelessly audacious column. First, he suggested that people pushing a carbon tax to lower emissions profess to believe in global warming, and snarkily added that some of those people actually believe in global warming. Wow. With such wit, he should have written for Stephen Colbert!

In fact, he works for the Ethan Allen Institute, part of a nationwide network of organizations (State Policy Network) that promote the political agenda of certain wealthy fossil fuel industrialists. These organizations mislead the public with nonsense oped articles and TV ads. Their efforts to deceive the public have been reported by Bloomberg's Businessweek and The Center for Media and Democracy.

For readers who missed McClaughry's first snarky climate change denial nonsense, he offered a more absurd piece of rubbish. He suggested that carbon taxes are promoted by people who want to put polluters in jail, and they only promote carbon taxes as a fallback position.

And yet, an editor and business writer for the Wall Street Journal Holman Jenkins Jr. considers carbon taxes the first best way to cut emissions. Bush's head of the Council of Economic Advisors Greg Mankiw, who also served as Romney's economic advisor, advocates a national carbon tax as the best way to cut emissions and deal with global warming. Similar wisdom comes from many Republicans: former EPA directors serving Republican presidents, George Schultz, Henry Paulson and Senator Susan Collins.

With all the talk about carbon tax bills pending in the states of Vermont, Massachusetts, and Washington, perhaps the State Policy Network is nervous that Republican Congressmen (like Chris Gibson, R-N.Y.), who have been quiet about climate change for fear of attack ads from SPN's organizations, are starting to talk about the need for Congressional action. Perhaps SPN is stepping up efforts because Citizens' Climate Lobby, an organization of volunteers lobbying Congress for a national carbon tax to stabilize the climate, is doubling in size every year and making progress explaining the economic benefits of a carbon tax to Congress. CCL volunteers don't want polluters put in prison. We want polluters to pay for their pollution, just like homeowners pay sewer fees and businesses pay trash pick up charges.

If you believe in capitalism and the free market, you don't expect other people to pay your trash costs because you know this distorts prices and causes the market system to fail.

From John McClaughry's article, it would seem that he, the Ethan Allen Institute, SPN and fossil fuel tycoons only believe in proper garbage disposal in their neighborhoods, but not in everyone's backyards.

Carbon taxes are the one truly selfless, ethical NIMBY campaign because it protects everyone's backyards.